While the heat seems to have broken completely in Chicago, it has only somewhat here, and not with the thunderous calamity I was really hoping for. I love watching storms move in across the flatness here, the clouds building on the horizon, the wind that picks up crazy fast. How it smells afterward. In the city, they just sort of appear over the buildings and usually move on out over the lake pretty quickly. Because it's really been too warm to spend much time outside or even have so much as a window open, I'm getting that same cabin-fevery unrest I get in winter and am anxious to get home and back to my routines. I have been working a little on books that need to be done and shipped Monday as soon as I get back, but not nearly as ambitiously as I'd planned. And distracting myself otherwise with 80's movies and internet diversions. But tonight, we got to sit outside for awhile and dinner was filled with perfect summer foods like bratwursts, lemonade, sweet corn, pasta salad and rootbeer floats for dessert, all the sort of stuff I never make myself and miss about home. There's little to nothing happening in the writing arena this week, mostly since my head feels full of other things (wistful lingering boy drama, press business, to do lists, etc.) If only I could switch my brain over to vacation mode every once in a while.

(I also took a round of pics in my mom's garden, and was amazingly able to get a good shot of a fluttering target we noticed near the driveway.)

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